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It’s Not Just Black Parents

Daphne S. Cain is the interim dean of social work and the director of the master of social work program at Louisiana State University. Her research interests include parenting practices and parenting interventions with high-risk and vulnerable families.

August 14, 2011

Corporal punishment is not counter to mainstream parenting practices; it is actually the norm.

There are a number of sociodemographic variables that predict greater use of physical punishment including the gender of the child (with boys receiving more harsh discipline), poverty, having a female head-of-household, maternal education, maternal age at child’s birth, holding positive attitudes toward corporal punishment, parental experiences with physical punishment and religion (with evangelical and conservative Protestants more likely to support spanking than other religious groups). Regardless of these often highly correlated mediating variables, African-American parents tend to hold more favorable attitudes toward corporal punishment and utilize it more frequently to teach obedience, appropriate social behaviors and right from wrong.

But the premise of the question -- do parents of different races face different pressures for and against spanking, and do African-American parents experience and respond to the pressures exacted by social institutions, including schools and child welfare agencies, to view spanking as counter to mainstream parenting practices? -- is flawed.

Corporal punishment is not counter to mainstream parenting practices; it is actually the norm. Corporal punishment continues to enjoy strong normative support in American society even in the face of empirical evidence suggesting that it is ineffective and may have unintended negative effects on children including increased mental health problems, conflicted parent-child relationships and child and adult aggression.

Moreover, while social institutions like schools and child welfare agencies may strongly disavow the use of corporal punishment, if parents perceive corporal punishment to be instrumental in achieving their parenting goals as well as normative within their social identity group (be that racial, religious cultural, or socioeconomic), then the use of such practices will only be marginally influenced by external and institutional influences.